


The Slightest Knowledge

by IthacaontheMove



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Kitsune, M/M, Mind Games, Nogitsune, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 18:11:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8927068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IthacaontheMove/pseuds/IthacaontheMove
Summary: Do you know the Nothing Man?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InsanelyYours96](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsanelyYours96/gifts).



> This is a 3B divergence. Please assume all the Hales left Beacon Hills as soon as they possibly could after the events of 3A.
> 
> For my giftee, who wanted badass Stiles. I'm not sure I succeeded, and this turned out much weirder than I expected, but I hope you enjoy it anyway! 
> 
> Merry Christmas!

The first time Cora hears the rumor, she disregards it completely.

She has good excuses, she really does. She’s studying for her GED, Derek needs constant looking after by someone considerably less stupid than him, and settling into a new place isn’t easy even without superhuman senses.

The second time she hears it, she pretends she doesn’t.

The name Beacon Hills tastes like ashes in her mouth. Like blood and sickness and wrongness. Like a graveyard where the people don’t know they’re dead yet.

The third time she hears it, Derek’s with her. They have a meeting in Central Park with a local pack (there are so many here in New York she can never keep all the names and faces straight) and her job is to smile and look innocent while Derek convinces the others they aren’t a threat. Easy enough.

Except the alpha had to look them over with sharp eyes that left red-hot hooks underneath her skin and say, “You’re from Beacon Hills, are you not?”

Derek looks startled, not having expected an inquiry about their origins, but Cora can already see where this is going. “Yes.”

The alpha isn’t perturbed by the wealth of meaning put into that one word. “I thought so. I assume you’ve heard the rumors about a hostile takeover by someone they call the Nothing Man?” There is a flash of humor in the words. Surely, they say, surely it cannot be true that an entire town populated by God only knows what supernatural nonsense was overrun and cut off from the outside world. Just wait and see, Cora thinks grimly.

“Um, no? Hostile takeover?” Derek is moving past startled and into aggressive, which is pretty much the default Hale response to any bad news. Cora would normally be right there with him, but she’s so, so tired.

This time the alpha lets the amusement show blatantly on his face and his wide smile crinkles his eyes at the corners. “I exaggerate. I never thought they were true, of course. Honestly, the idea of the Nothing Man leading an army of vengeful spirits sounds far-fetched even to my ears.” Derek twitches, and the alpha misinterprets the movement. “I mean no offense. I was only curious.”

Derek offers him a grimace. “None taken.” He abruptly stands, giving the traditional head nod of deference werewolves favor instead of the handshake, and stalks off.

Cora gives the taken aback werewolves her very best shit-eating grin, learned long ago courtesy of Uncle Peter, and flounces off after him.

She finds Derek practically hyperventilating under a bench in Central Park. She wishes she could say this was new or scary or frightening. Instead, she tucks herself under the bench with him and waits. Eventually, his breathing evens out to match hers and now they are just two figures under a park bench that the ever-adaptive New Yorkers pay no mind to, trying to avoid life’s problems.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Derek’s voice sounds rubbed raw.

“Knowing those idiots? Almost 100% chance.” Derek huffs at her flippant tone.

“I guess we should—” Cora grabs his arm, cutting him off. He almost jumps out of his skin at the contact and Cora feels a pang of regret at how standoffish she’s been since she found out he was alive. “We don’t have to do anything, Derek. Those people, that town, they aren’t our responsibility anymore.”

She wills him to understand her words, her nameless feelings that going back to that place means death, it has always meant death, that it is a doomed place, forsaken by luck and fortune and happiness.

Derek scrubs his hands over his face, jostling her in the process. “We have to go, Cora.” His words are muffled by his fingers, but Cora can hear the steel in the words, the unbending loyalty and faith that mom had noticed early on, cementing Derek’s place as a beta.

Cora has the steel without the loyalty or faith. Mom never knew what to make of her.

Derek, though, is different. He relies on other people too much. Cora recognizes this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Wolves are pack-oriented creatures. If all members of the pack were the same, it would not function properly as a unit. They needed the different personalities to make a greater whole.

This doesn’t stop her from digging her lengthened nails into the meaty flesh of his arm. He doesn’t protest; instead he makes a subtle movement that shoves his arm deeper into the bite of her nails, and it’s this more than anything that makes her stop. She gets out from under the bench and sits on top of it, shading her eyes from the dappled sunlight. She really, really doesn’t want to go to Beacon Hills.

“We need to find Peter,” Derek says, “We need to know what we’re dealing with.” She peeks down and his hands are still over his face while the blood from her nails runs freely down his arms. He looks like he lost a battle over a French fry with a pigeon. Perversely, this makes Cora feel better.

“Yep,” she says, popping the p as obnoxiously as possible. Uncle Peter always has the information you need. At a price.

“Of course I have the information you need,” Uncle Peter tells them when they find him in (where else?) an extremely lavish penthouse in Toronto.

“So what’s the price?” Derek’s eyeing the minibar with intent.

How Uncle Peter can manage to look so insulted baffles her. “My dear nephew, there is no price for family.” He spreads his arms wide in what must be to him a gesture of magnanimity but it just makes him look like a tool.

Cora gets up to leave. “Nothing’s worth this,” she mutters under her breath at Derek who looks at her with betrayed eyes.

“So I suppose you don’t care about the fact that several portals have opened up in our charming ancestral home? And that the one they call the Nothing Man is responsible?” Uncle Peter’s voice is coiled like a snake ready to strike. Cora pauses with her hand on the doorknob.

“Portals?” Derek doesn’t bother with surprise, going straight for weary. Cora, who hadn’t been in Beacon Hills for as long, does feel a pang of surprise.

“Indeed,” Uncle Peter says and because he is a drama queen of epic proportions, he waits until she’s taken her hand off the doorknob and fully turns around before he drops the next bombshell. “With fox spirits. Kitsunes, they're called. And the Nothing Man is a Nogitsune.”

There is silence. Cora didn’t know there was such a thing as a fox spirit. She never wanted to know. Maybe her brain shorted out and she heard Uncle Peter wrong.

When she tunes back in, Derek’s voice is strangled. “And how does one defeat a fox spirit?”

Cora has never seen a shrug so elegant. “I’m certain I don’t know. Perhaps we can try your tried and true approach of throwing yourself at something until either you die or someone gains an inkling of a clue?”

There’s real malice in those words, and Cora puts her hands up and steps between them before things get worse. Uncle Peter’s eyes are a glittering blue. Derek’s slumped over a chair like he’s been punched in the kidneys. Cora mentally curses them and the rest of her family and werewolves in general and herself for good measure. She really doesn’t want to go back. She wants to make like a dog metaphor and run far, far away with her tail between her legs. What she does is look Peter in the eye.

“I hate airplanes. We’re taking your car.”

And so that’s the story of how a 2016 Lexus SUV slowly approaches the “Welcome to Beacon Hills” sign in the middle of the night on a Tuesday.

Derek insisted on driving. Cora petitioned mightily for several states and gave up around Illinois. Uncle Peter never had a chance and so had spent most of the trip alternating between sulking in the backseat and criticizing Derek’s driving.

“It seems…normal.” Derek needs to shut up right now before he jinxes it.

“Okay, we checked it out, let’s go back now. We can stop at that good taco place on the way.” Everything in Cora’s body is screaming at her to leave.

Uncle Peter is eerily silent in the backseat. Suddenly, a dark figure detaches itself from the shadows, and Derek owes her his firstborn at the rate he’s going.

The figure rapidly approaches the driver’s side door. Cora is pushing at Derek, trying to get him to punch it in reverse and he’s fending off her attempts at the gearshift and saying it will bring unwanted attention if they flee now like she cares, when she’ll be long gone eating tacos without a care in the world like she’s never heard of Beacon Hills and stupid fox spirits.

“Proof of possession?” A smooth voice cuts through the squabbling. Cora eyes the newcomer. She appears to be a normal human. She takes what she hopes is a subtle sniff, sees Derek doing the same with much less finesse, and has to stop herself from baring her fangs when underneath the normal human scent fox and energy and ozone come to her nose.

Derek tries for a charming smile. The lady is unfazed. “Proof of possession?” She’s stepping forward more now, into their personal space, and her face is decidedly less friendly.

“Excuse me,” Uncle Peter says and when the hell did he get out of the car? “If we may have a moment to talk privately, I think I can give you what you need.” Ugh, Uncle Peter, turn it off, Cora thinks viciously. Next to her, Derek wrinkles his nose.

They walk a little farther out and when Peter stops well within their hearing range, the fox lady beckons him on further. “This isn’t good,” Derek says under his breath.

“No shit, Sherlock.” Cora isn’t in the mood for Captain Obvious statements at the moment.

Uncle Peter’s out there for a couple of minutes before he starts back for the car. “Oh, thank god,” Derek whispers in relief and Cora feels her muscles start to unclench.

Uncle Peter gets in the car and buckles his seatbelt. “So what happened? Is she going to let us through?” Derek asks impatiently.

“Oh no,” Uncle Peter says calmly, and Cora’s stomach drops about fifty feet through the ground. “I was just convincing her to give us a thirty second head start.”

“Thirty seconds?!” Derek snarls right before a blast of blue energy lifts the car up and sends it spinning wheel over axle.

“You couldn’t have mentioned this sooner?!” Cora screeches as the glass shatters around them. Neither she nor Derek had their seatbelts on, and she’s white knuckling the oh shit handle like her life depends on it. Derek has a death grip on the steering wheel.

Uncle Peter heaves a put-upon sigh. She catches a glimpse of him in the backseat with seatbelt on and arms folded before the rear view mirror snaps off when they hit the ground again. “You should be happy we got this much. She wanted to kill us all on sight.”

The car is making ominous groaning noises. Cora can feel the momentum carrying them slowing and it’s only the adrenaline that keeps her from hissing at the numerous cuts and bruises decorating her body. Then another blue energy bolt hits the car and they start rolling once again.

“I’m going to kill you!” She can’t tell if she or Derek yelled it, but it’s a sentiment she feels very strongly nonetheless.

Uncle Peter uncrosses his arms and inspects a cut on his arm. He tuts, “Many people stronger than you have tried and failed.”

Cora gives a scream of unarticulated rage and the passenger door finally gives way. Derek’s had been ripped away sometime after the 4th or 5th roll. Both of Uncle Peter’s doors are intact, but that will only make it more satisfying when Cora rips them off with her bare hands.

Finally, the inevitable happens and the car hits a tree with a loud crunch. It was back side first, and Cora will imagine the disarray at Peter’s end of the car with much glee after the world stops spinning. Any minute, now.

There’s a retching sound next to her and the smell of vomit fills her nostrils. “Gross,” she moans feebly. Her left leg is bent at a weird angle, and she feels the telltale burn of glass shards all along her side. At least she doesn’t have to kick out the door, she thinks as she shimmies out onto the grass. 

 

* * *

 

This was a bad idea.

One day, Peter hopes, he will stop being conned into helping this pathetic little family unit of his. What he’s done to deserve such a lot in life, he’ll never know. Distantly, he swears he hears Talia’s laughter.

Or it could be the ringing in his ears. He cuts the seatbelt off with one sharpened nail and kicks out the door, feeling too out of sorts at the moment to try anything resembling finesse.

Of course, simply announcing their presence in Beacon Hills would have been just as effective, but there’s something to be said for crushed metal and glass, he muses, gazing at the wreckage with not a little awe.

Cora is a panting lump on the grass and he can hear Derek staggering to his feet somewhere behind him.

“I’m never letting you drive any vehicle of mine ever again,” he pointedly tells Derek, who is, he notes with a small amount of glee, futilely trying to wipe the vomit off his shirt. Peter’s knees are barely holding him up, but at least he kept his food where it belonged.

Derek gestures to the remains of Peter's beautiful Lexus, may she rest in peace. “This wasn’t even my fault!” Ah, too easy. The acidic remark about blame is waiting on the tip of his tongue when the sound of footsteps approaching halts it in its tracks.

“We have to leave _now_ ,” Derek hisses as if Peter didn’t already know that. Derek snatches up Cora and takes off into the woods without so much as a by your leave. Peter sniffs, once again catching the now distasteful scent of fox, before taking off after him.

They walk for some time, stopping once to set Cora on her feet and a few more times to cover their tracks. They’re heading to the old pack house, Peter realizes eventually, surprised he didn’t notice it sooner. In the wake of all that’s happened, it’s easy to forget that he once had a home here, once had laughter and love and light in his life.

They crouch in the underbrush within sight of the house. “Do you think it’s safe?” Derek whispers. He always asks the wrong questions. No place is ever safe.

Cora takes a deep whiff of the air. “I can’t smell anything. And the windows are dark.” Again, foolish. There are hundreds of ways to hide scent, and if the guard by the town line had alerted her comrades, they could be looking at a full-scale ambush.

“That doesn’t mean anything. These assholes are tricky as fuck, and I guarantee they already know you’re here.” What a surprisingly astute if poorly worded statement. Pleased at hearing his own thoughts mirrored, Peter finds himself nodding along as the voice continues. “This is without a doubt the most obvious trap I’ve ever seen. Please don’t fall for this, or I will never again put any faith in the werewolf species, not that I had much to begin with.”

Peter decides to drive the point home. “Finally someone is speaking sense. We should take a step back and observe our surroundings first. Do some reconnaissance and then we act. Or do you want to get killed by a bunch of psychotic kitsunes and their despotic leader?”

Derek looks confused. “Ri—Right.” Poor boy, it appears thinking strategically has taxed his brain past its limits. “I guess we’ll head a little closer to town then?” Cora, too, wrinkles her brow like she doesn’t know what to do with this information (follow it, obviously!). And why is she staring at Peter like he’s some sort of madman?

No matter. They are retreating from the Hale house, and sometimes all you can ask for is not getting killed today, so Peter rolls his eyes and follows after them.

“Dude, they totally think you’re crazy. I mean, crazier than usual. But I guess that’s par for the course with you. Werewolf, back from the dead, destroyer of worlds and all that. Nice call on the house, by the way. They were totally in there, I went and checked. Heard you guys made quite an entrance too. Might have to go check it out for myself.”

Peter stops in his tracks. “What?”

“What? Is it a crime to want to see a car accident now? I don’t want to hear any judgment from the guy who killed his own niece and tormented Scott for like a million years, like, like a freakin’ twelve plagues of Egypt type deal, the gross ones with the locusts or frogs—wait, what?”

“Would not the ones involving actual death seem a better comparison to make?” Peter cannot say he’s ever been compared to a biblical plague, of all things, but one should demand excellence when one could.

This earns him what appears to be a sneer, though it is a little difficult to see on a translucent face. “Comparing you to death would only feed your ego, you complete bastard.”

Ignoring the strangeness of the situation, it’s almost fun to exchange words with someone whose immediate response isn’t caveman grunts or threats to his anatomy. “I believe you did that already, with your destroyer of worlds comment.”

“I forgot why you’re so infuriating. It’s all coming back to me now…” Rapid movement of translucent hands appears to cause a blurring effect. Interesting.

“Great, he’s finally lost it,” he hears Cora say to Derek, which is fair enough.

After all, he never imagined he would come back to Beacon Hills, let alone find it infected with kitsunes, let alone find himself conversing with the ghost of Stiles Stilinski. 

 

* * *

 

“I’m not a ghost,” Stiles mumbles under his breath. He’s been looking rather offended since Peter pointed this out.

“If you’re not a ghost, then why am I the only one who can hear and kind of see you?” Peter is talking out of the corner of his mouth now. He doesn’t know why he bothers. Judging by the looks on the others’ faces, it’s too late.

“You’re just lucky, I guess,” Stiles says, matching Peter’s withering glare with a big grin.

As if being stuck with the two imbeciles isn’t enough, now Peter must endure such profound immaturity. He’s positive this time that it’s Talia laughing and not the wind.

“So what’s going on?” He asks Stiles a few quiet minutes later, unable to hold in his curiosity any longer. He has an idea, a rough outline in his mind of the events that must have occurred, but it would be nice to have it confirmed by an inside source.

“Oh, you know, the usual. We accidentally open a portal to another world to save our parents, an evil fox spirit called a Nogitsune gets through, it possesses me, opens more portals, more kitsunes possess more people, we try to stop it, get painfully beaten, and here we are.” As explanations go, it’s rather lacking, although it certainly explains why there was a fox-human at the gate asking for proof of possession. It does not explain why the Stiles ghost is here. Or why it’s talking to him.

“You should head for Lydia’s. She’s got like tons of anti-possession stuff no thanks to you,” Stiles gives Peter the stink-eye. “So she didn’t get caught up like all the others. Her house is the only safe zone.”

Peter relays the information to Derek and Cora. Well, actually, what he says is, “We should go to the Martin girl’s house, she might know what’s going on,” but what they don’t know won’t hurt them.

It says something about the state of morale in their group when they follow his orders without question and change directions again.

Peter chances another glance at Stiles in his peripheral vision. Some time has passed since they last saw each other, but… “You look terrible.”

Oddly, this makes Stiles give a choked-off snort ending in a bizarre sort of coughing fit. Peter, used to these sorts of noises by now after so much time in Stiles’ forced company, ignores it. “You mean besides the whole transparency thing?” Stiles asks. He begins twirling around as if being translucent—the correct term is not transparent—is something to brag about. Considering the fact that Peter cannot see his feet properly, this makes said motion quite disturbing. “Why do you care?”

The instant suspicion is to be expected, but it makes Peter weary anyway. Being a packless omega does little for one’s ego, so when he left Beacon Hills, he left in search of power. Only to find his ambition waning and the manipulations dull.

“I don’t care,” he says.

“Yeah, typical Peter Hale. I should have known you would have come here for your own sake.” However true they are, the remarks hurt.

“What do you want from me?”

Stiles watches him with fathomless eyes. “Maybe I want you to prove me wrong.”

It is strange, Peter thinks, feeling uncomfortably exposed. He had been treating other people as nameless faces for so long—always in the name of some grander plan: revenge, power, the good of the pack—that being the only one someone could rely on was as unsettling as the charged silence lingering between them.

No one, as far back as he could remember, had dared him to do better. Begged: yes, threatened: definitely, but a dare: absolutely not. Suddenly, he feels like laughing. Exhilaration sweeps through him for the first time in months at the idea of surpassing Stiles’ low expectations. Challenge accepted. 

“You’re thinner than you were the last time I saw you,” Peter says, making the first move. He shuffles closer and subtly inspects Stiles’ face. “It’s difficult to tell, but I believe you are paler than usual as well. Have you been getting enough sleep?” Peter frowns. The see-through quality of Stiles’ skin makes the shadows under his eyes stand out all the more. Stiles opens his mouth and Peter hastens to clarify. “Before you became a ghost, I mean.”

Stiles stares at him, hard. Peter turns his full focus on him in return. Stiles runs his hand through his hair, before he gazes down at it, laughing mirthlessly. Where his feet would be sink a few inches into the ground. “How—” he chokes out. “How do you know that?”

“Proof is staring me right in the face. Literally,” Peter explains, since Stiles hasn’t taken his eyes off him.

“Don’t—Don’t do that.” Stiles’ voice is hollow. “You can’t—”

“We’re here,” Derek calls from up ahead and the tension between them is broken. Peter curses Derek silently. Then not so silently, for good measure.

Kicked puppy thy name is Derek Hale. “What have I done to deserve that?”

Really, it’s way too easy. But Peter can be benevolent when he chooses. “Perhaps you two should go on ahead and break the news. I’ll hang back until the coast is clear.” He pretends not to hear Cora’s mumbled _would serve you right_ as they make their way up the driveway.

This garners a snort from Stiles. “Are you afraid of Lydia?”

“Hardly. Self-preservation does not equal fear.” Judging by the almost inaudible buzz of supernatural power Peter can hear coming off the property, he’s not sure _anyone_ would be welcome.

Something of his loose-floating observation must show on his face because Stiles says, “She’s just cautious. Can you blame her?”

“No. Caution is a rare thing in this town. It should be cultivated and allowed to grow wherever it can be found.” This earns him an almost smile; Stiles no doubt thinking of all the times every single one of them has failed to show restraint.

“Listen,” Stiles says quietly. There’s a tone in his voice that makes the hairs on the back of Peter’s neck rise. “I can’t go in there.”

It’s not that he can’t, Peter knows. It’s that he won’t. The great surge of anger sweeping through him knocks him off guard. That Stiles is forced to rely on him, of all people, in this town that should have been burned off the map when his pack burned, makes something in him twist.

The world isn’t fair. Peter knows this, has known this for a long time. Sometimes you put trust in the wrong people. Sometimes you get burned for it. On rare occasions, you don’t. Peter isn’t a gambling man, but for the first time he finds himself wanting to be.

“No,” Peter says. He lets Stiles hear all the meaning in his words, trusting him to understand. It’s all he can offer. “I suppose you can’t.”

He turns away once he hears Derek’s words of acquiescence and strolls up to the door of the Martin house. He can’t stop himself from looking back; when he does, Stiles is gone.

 

* * *

 

At first, there is nothing but the light.

It is all around, it is inside, it is within, it is the universe.

It is all things.

The light is whole, holiness. It is worth striving for. It must be striven for.

Then, there is a niggling sense.

She is a self. She struggles with this revelation at first. She is not yet part of the light so she is imperfect.

She feels weightless. She feels nothing at all.

There is nothing behind her. This frightens her. There is light in front of her. This comforts her.

She turns back to the light. But she has been made aware of an uncomfortable truth. The light does not shine as brightly as before.

More time passes. More awareness. It is good and yet not good, how she is close enough to feel the light go down her throat and into her stomach and out through her toes. She is drowning in it; her lungs cannot get enough air. She has a body she has just been made dangerously conscious of. The light dims once again.

Movement comes next, and with it the pain. A persistent ache in her feet, her bones filled with lead, her neck like someone twisted and twisted until it popped off. She is walking. Endlessly trudging onward towards the light. It all seems like a chore. Like a job where she’s not getting paid. Like the sad sound of an arrow missing a target. Like a pointless death. And still, the light darkens.

She has half a mind, then. She is a puppet on a string and yet if you look closely at the expression on the puppet’s face you’ll see that the puppet knows it’s a puppet and you are not actually watching a puppet dance and move under the string, that it isn’t a puppet at all. When is a puppet not a puppet? She wonders this as more light dissipates.

And then…there is a persistent noise tugging at her consciousness.

“Come on, you have to be tired of hearing my voice by now. Especially since it’s interfering with the whole free of earthly troubles thing you’ve got going on right now. Jesus, this place really gets on your nerves after a while, doesn’t it? Well, mine anyway.”

A long silence. What might be a breath, exhaled softly.

“I don’t know how long it’s been. Somehow, I lose more track of time now than I was before the Nogitsune got me. And you know how bad it got there at the end. Or you don’t. Whatever. I can hardly keep track of who knows what and who remembers what and what supernatural plot is going on at the moment and who wants to kill who. This place is a shitshow. Oh, and did I tell you they’re calling it the Nothing Man now? We’re famous!

“The terrible thing about it is we all knew it was a bad idea,” he went on in after a while. “I mean, submersing yourself in an ice cold metal bathtub with nothing between you and oblivion but a few sentimental trinkets is bad enough. We didn’t need the whole Beacon Hills is now a beacon thing. What were we thinking? What was Deaton thinking? What was your whole family thinking? It’s not fair that our lives were ruined by forces outside our control.”

Later:

“I know what you would say too. You’d tell me to get my head out of my ass and do something about it. I came here to tell you I plan on it. The Hales are back in town. Too late as always. Apparently, Peter can hear me and see me. You probably forgot when I told you however long ago, but I’ve been wandering around town like a…a…wandering spirit entity ever since the Nogitsune bastard took over my bodacious body. So there’s a tiny bit of hope, I guess. Better than nothing.”

Then:

“I miss you, Allison.”

She is walking. There is a boy walking next to her, holding her hand and swinging it between them. He has brown hair. His hand is cold and he is looking off into the distance and the word friend comes to mind for some reason. It’s all fuzzy and jumbled up in her head. She blinks once, twice. It comes back to her slowly.

“Allison?” The boy is looking at her now. The shooting pain in her knees threatens to distract her. She struggles through it, swimming through the molasses until…

“Where am I?” She croaks out, startled at the heaviness in her voice, the cracks. The pain is gone.

“Holy shit, Allison, is that you?”

Allison. Her name is Allison. And the boy next to her is—

“It’s me. Stiles. I don’t know how much you remember—”

Her head is clearing. “Everything. I remember everything. Mostly.”

“Your dad is a little farther up ahead,” he points out the salt-and-pepper hair amongst the mass of people before she can ask. They’re surrounded on all sides by what looks like the entire town of Beacon Hills. They swerve around Allison and Stiles effortlessly, the persistent stride of their gait and upturned, rapturous faces deeply unsettling.

“Danny’s maybe a few yards closer.” She can just make out his distinctive build and signature tight t-shirt. “Lydia made it out okay, though. And they can’t possess wolves, so Scott was able to bargain for Melissa’s and Isaac’s lives as well as his own in exchange for turning the other cheek.”

Allison remembers the first few days before the shit hit the fan. Hallucinatory dreams and visions aside, there was peace for a few moments in between. They thought they had dodged the worst of it.

Then, Stiles came to school wearing his skin like a cheap new suit. Still, they tried to brush it off. Each of them was a bundle of raw nerves in their own way, and Stiles had always been the odd one out.

“Willful denial,” the Nogitsune had said, by the time they figured out what was going on. Its magic left them bound and restrained on Stiles’ living room floor. “Humans make it almost painfully simple. You would think they would have learned their lesson by now. What a boring existence. Lucky for you it is so short.” It was funny how a smirk on a familiar face could look that malevolent.

“Stiles, why?” Scott croaked out. The veins on his arms stood out in sharp relief as he attempted to free himself.

The Nogitsune’s eyes narrowed. “I am not a Stiles,” it said in a voice with two different tones. “And I tire of this game. This is not entertaining in the slightest.” It waved over two more people that had been hovering in the room ever since they had attempted this half-baked plan of confronting Stiles face-to-face.

Allison jolted uselessly against the invisible binds at the sight of the mailman and a face she was sure she’d seen around town before. How did—? She registered their foxy grins. Possession. Of course there were more. She felt stupid for not seeing it sooner.

The Nogitsune studied its nails. “My friends will see you to your new homes with the utmost of respect, I assure you. Would not want to damage the goods, after all.” Allison inhaled sharply, the air passing through her parched lips in a rough gasp as she was placed on her feet with all the care of a mother helping up her child from the floor.

Unfortunately, this only served to draw the creature’s eyes to her. “This one stays,” it said, linking its arm with hers in a poor facsimile of camaraderie. Isaac, Scott, and Lydia shouted in protest from their position by the door. But its minions simply urged them on with gentle motions, the way one might shoo a beloved pet away from one’s food.

The Nogitsune thoughtfully arranged a regretful expression on its face. Allison was startled to note she’d seen this expression before. “Only the best treatment for the Argents.” A flash of darkness on the edge of her vision, a vague impression of a beautiful face and flowing robes and she was falling…falling…into nothing.

She snaps back into the present. It wasn’t nothing she fell into, she thinks, horrified. It was closer to peace. Serenity.

“Oh my god,” she says, barely able to form the words. “They’re dying. They’re walking to their deaths. The light is the light of the afterlife.”

She misses Stiles’ jerky nod, too busy running to her dad. Those walking part effortlessly around her. “Dad! Dad, come on! You have to stop, please.” She tugs at his arm, she slaps him, she insults his favorite guns, but it’s no use. He doesn’t acknowledge her at all. He just keeps walking.

“I don’t understand.” She turns to Stiles. “Why won’t he snap out of it like I did?”

Stiles puts his hand on her shoulder. “It takes time and effort. It took me ages to wake you up, and I’ve been trying to talk a little with everybody.”

Allison swallows down the nausea building in her stomach. “How many?”

“17 so far. 6 men, 9 women, and 2 children.”

She hadn’t considered the kitsunes would possess _children_. “So what, they’re gone, just like that?”

“As far as I know.”

Allison watches her dad. He seems pretty far from the light, but she can’t be sure. “Stiles…”

“What?”

She hates herself for asking. “Where’s your dad?”

It takes Stiles a moment to respond. “He was one of the first ones to walk into the light.”

Allison cast about the room, searching for something—anything—to say. “I’m so sorry,” she settles on, even though it’s inadequate.  

“You see, I’ve come up with a theory,” Stiles continues relentlessly. “Those who have something to live for, who have the least will to die, like your dad and Danny, they end up towards the back. Those who don’t, well…”

Allison shakes her head as though she can dislodge the demons settling there. “I’m sure that’s not true, Stiles. I know how much he loved you—”

“He didn’t love me enough to not die! He didn’t love me enough to live! My dad would rather turn to oblivion via kitsune than face his own son.” Stiles subsides with a bitter wince. “I’m sorry, Allison. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

A long silence stretches between them. Then Stiles straightens out and smirks, looking much more like himself. “I can teach you how to leave if you want. It’s easy. You’ll only have Peter and me for company, but he’s not so bad now, I even like him a little.”

Allison allows this graceless change of subject. “I’m staying. I need to get my, um,” she falters over the words. “My dad back. And Danny. And everyone else we can help.”

Stiles nods as if he was expecting this. “I’m going to go back and see if I can help Peter and the others come up with any viable plans. I’ll come back here from time to time to help you too.”

He leaves before she can say anything else.

 

* * *

 

Stiles isn’t quite sure how this happened.

“How did this happen?”

“Hm?” Right, Peter’s here too.

“I mean, how did I end up in a shed in the woods behind Lydia’s house with you for company and hardly any room at all to move?” Stiles gestures to the books piled up high in every corner.

Peter doesn’t look up from the book he’s reading. “Technically, you don’t need any room at all, since nothing here can touch you.”

In fact, at the moment, there are several books passing through Stiles’ right side and one particularly heavy and ancient looking one is where his elbow would normally be.

He can’t let Peter distract him. “That’s not the point.”

“Then kindly get to it. Some of us are working,” Peter snarks half-heartedly, most of his attention still on the book.

Stiles has never seen Peter show such dedication to research. Normally, he waltzes in, offers help he may or may not provide, and waits for the fireworks. He probably also normally works in a house or at least a place with plumbing. Having to go inside Lydia’s house just to use the bathroom wouldn’t be a pleasant task for anyone, let alone a man she holds a grudge against.

But Peter is still here after three weeks of nothing but staring at old, musty books for days on end. Stiles can’t figure out why, and it’s driving him nuts.

He had come back from his visit to the other world out of sorts. He was happy Allison wasn’t going to die and it would be nice not to have to spend so much time there—that place was seriously creepy—but he felt a small kernel of resentment as well. Why had he succeeded with Allison and not his dad? Why was the last memory Stiles has of his dad tainted with desperation and resentment?

Peter was an easy target to take it out on. He gave back as good as he got and no matter what Stiles did he refused to leave.

Stiles went for the killing blow first. He taunted Peter about his dead family, the closest thing to a chink in the armor he’s going to get. Peter turned it around on him, asking about his dad, and that whole fiasco ended with Stiles sticking his head into the ground so Peter wouldn’t see him cry.

His next tactic was more subtle. Stiles told Peter he couldn’t go into Lydia’s. He didn’t say why; let Peter assume it was because of the possession deterrents Lydia put up when in fact, it was guilt. He had a feeling Peter knew anyway. So he made Peter bring any relevant books outside and become his designated page-turner. This went on for quite some time, until Peter asked Lydia for some leftover building materials and erected a shed just big enough for two in the woods connected to the backyard, as far back as Lydia’s methods of protection would go.

Stiles decided to take drastic measures after that. Since he never slept, he would keep Peter up at all hours of the night. Singing, shouting, it didn’t matter as long as he kept up a constant stream of noise. This backfired on him spectacularly when Peter somehow acquired a pair of earplugs and took to putting them in whenever Stiles opened his mouth to speak. Stiles conceded that round quickly.

His last-ditch effort involved simply removing himself from Peter’s company. He would disappear randomly back and forth to the other world in the middle of their conversations, which had the added bonus of being able to keep an eye on Allison’s progress and update her with any new information.  Peter would just continue where they left off when Stiles returned as if nothing had happened. Eventually, he even figured out the pattern of Stiles’ appearances back to the real world and began waiting around for him to come back.

Around and around they went for the last three weeks. Gradually, Stiles got used to Peter always being there. It was like the frog in a pot analogy. You don’t know you’re boiling to death until it happens. Stiles doesn’t notice his demeanor towards Peter change, become softer. He doesn’t notice when he starts opening up to Peter either. It all just happens.  

His train of thought gets cut off by the crinkle of a wrapper, overloud in the small space. Peter is unwrapping a Reese’s, mindful of the books as he does so.

Stiles licks his lips. Wow, that looks good. The candy bar, he means. Not the werewolf-candy bar-book combination.

“You’re drooling.”

“Huh?”

Peter points a disgusted finger at the saliva dripping down his half-open mouth.

Stiles hastily wipes it away. He tries not to pout. “I can’t eat in this form. Obviously.”

Peter’s silence makes him nervous. Stiles makes to wipe his hands on the back of his jeans before he remembers he doesn’t sweat. “It wouldn’t matter anyway.”

“What do you mean?”  

Stiles has to look away from Peter’s piercing gaze. “I’m not sure exactly how this whole possession thing works, but sometimes—sometimes I think I can taste like blood and rotten fruit or something. Like me and the Nogitsune are connected somehow.”

He doesn’t look up, afraid of Peter’s reaction.

“So use it,” Peter says languidly like he doesn’t care either way. Stiles notices he’s stopped eating the Reese’s though. It’s such a Peter thing to say, pressing every advantage the opponent gives up, but he does have a point. There must be _something_ there Stiles can use.

He casts his mind back to his pre-possession state. In his dreams, there was always a nagging sense that he was missing something. Like the bizarre images and nightmarish scenarios were distracting his attention away from something else. Something important.

“It has a weakness,” Stiles says, hardly aware he’s talking. He’s trying to conjure up the dreams again, examining them clinically from every angle instead of living them in the moment. “It’s protecting something. It has to be small, something it can hide in the dream world without me noticing.”

“A talisman or amulet perhaps?” Peter throws out. Several of the books mentioned that these objects could be used to summon or banish a spirit.

“No, it’s more important to it than that.” Stiles grabs his head in frustration. “Argh, I wish I could see it.”

“Perhaps your violent friend may be of some assistance,” Peter says.

“Violent friend? You mean Allison?” Peter’s lip curls in reply.

That’s right, Allison had been subjected to hallucinations too. The Nogitsune cast a wide net.

“Great idea, Peter! I’ll be off then!” Stiles disappears to the other world to the sound of Peter’s forlorn sigh. He wonders why the other puts up with him.

 

* * *

 

What Stiles hates most about coming back to Beacon Hills from the other world is the loss of time.

He knows time’s a nebulous concept in the first place, but it totally freaks him out. One of the first things his mom had lost when she got sick were minutes. She would stop talking in the middle of a sentence, stare off into space, or collapse to the floor. She never remembered what happened during those times. Then, she lost hours, days, years. Things she had all her life—things she earned, piece by painful piece—taken away from her by something no one could control.

Stiles is sure this is what she felt in those moments: disoriented, stumbling around the world like a newborn, everything the same as you left it yet different at the same time.

The trip was a bust. Allison hadn’t remembered anything unusual in her visions besides the whole zombie aunt thing. The only good news was that she had managed to get her dad and Danny off the path and they were making slow but steady progress with the others.

It was disappointing he had nothing to report to Peter. Back to the research grind they go. After Stiles’ head stops spinning.

He takes stock of his surroundings. Translucency? Check. Not stuck too far into the ground? Check. Kitsunes? None to be found.  Location? As usual, somewhere in the woods. It doesn’t make a difference how many times he does this, he always seems to end up in the same general area no matter how hard he tries to poof himself back to the shed.

Peter? Peter is nowhere to be seen. This is a little unusual, since Peter normally has a sixth sense for when Stiles is returning, but it’s not completely unprecedented. Maybe Peter’s waiting behind a tree to pop up and scare Stiles. Yeah, that must be it. There’s a crackling noise behind him. “You can come out now Peter, I know you’re—”

Stiles angles his head at the forest behind him, positive he heard another rustle. After being essentially invisible for so long, you become blasé about certain things. You would think suspicious noises in the woods would be one of those things, Stiles thinks, hiding behind the trunk of a large tree, his eyes straining to identify what caused the noise.

The foliage parts and someone stumbles out and falls in a heap to the ground.

“Peter,” Stiles’ voice is strangled. He lurches forward, hardly aware he’s moved until he’s sunk to his knees next to Peter. His hands hover over him uselessly. His rapid-fire “What happened?” comes out sharper than he expected and he winces in response to Peter’s flinch.

“Leave me be, demon,” Peter says, his voice scraping every one of Stiles’ nerves raw. “I won’t give in.”

“Peter, Peter, it’s me,” Through the tatters of his shirt, there are thick abrasions on Peter’s chest and arms, rope burn around his wrists and his neck, electricity pockmarks littering his body: definite signs of a beating, possibly with internal damage. In short, he looks terrible. Stiles reaches for the wounds unthinkingly.

Peter jerks away. “Don’t touch me.” He sounds defiant and tense, yet Stiles can see the fear in his eyes. It makes him curl his hands into fists at his sides.

Peter’s clothes shift and Stiles can see evidence of burns. He bites back a sob. “Peter, it’s me. It’s Stiles.”

“The least you could do is show me your true face before you kill me,” Peter says hoarsely.

“True face?” Horror blossoms through Stiles and he fixes darkening eyes on Peter.

“I can see right through you, fox. Do it before you lose your nerve, you pathetic worm.” Peter purses his lips together and his eyes flash blue.

Stiles can only kneel there for a moment, unsteady in the fading light of dusk, suddenly so angry he can hardly speak.

“You—You—You idiot!” He finally splutters out. “I’m gone for no less than five minutes and you get yourself captured? Why would you do that? What the fuck were you thinking?”    

Peter blinks. “Stiles? Is that you?”

“You idiot!” Stiles shouts again. Peter’s words get through to his brain at long last and he almost sinks through the ground in relief. He tries not to notice how long the wounds are taking to heal. “Yes, Peter, it’s me. It’s not a trick, I promise.”

Peter is trying to say something. “Book,” he coughs, gesturing to his pants.

“Book?” Stiles is coming up empty here. “Did you name your penis book? Oh my god, did the Nogitsune cut it off?!” He screeches.

Peter’s shoulders are shaking, and he’s making these weird little grunting noises and Stiles is starting to think he’s hyperventilating at the loss of his penis when he realizes Peter is laughing.

Stiles’ thoughts scatter, gone every which way at each mirthful exhale of Peter’s lungs.

Peter sticks his hand down his pants and it’s Stiles’ turn to hyperventilate. This is what you get for staying in the other world for so long, Stiles thinks faintly, his brain helpfully playing the moment over and over again in his mind.

“—iles! Stiles!” He jerks back to the present. “I should’ve done this much sooner. What a priceless reaction.” Peter is holding something out to him. It’s a book. Ohhhhhhh.

“Page 44,” Peter says with an unidentifiable look in his eyes. “I know you can do it, Stiles. I believe in you.” Then he passes out, the big jerk.

“Please, you have to get up Peter. I can’t help you like this. You need to get up now. Now!” Peter’s head is lolling to the side, and Stiles can’t touch anything in this world. All he can do is helplessly plead and beg Peter to get up.

“No,” Stiles whimpers. His vision goes blurry and he thinks about leaning forward and resting his head on Peter’s chest, feeling the solid strength of him. His imagination is awesome, Stiles thinks as he snuggles into Peter’s chest. Wait.

Stiles lifts his head from where it was most certainly resting comfortably.

He grabs Peter—gritting his teeth when his hands pass through—tries again, and this time makes contact. Holy shit, he might be able to do this.

Stiles knows he’s going to have to drag Peter all the way to Lydia’s house. It will take some serious concentration and strength he doesn’t have. His gaze skitters back over to Peter’s face.

Peter is a swollen bulbous mess of ground hamburger meat, but something about him is so beautiful that it makes Stiles’ chest clench painfully.

He thought of the look he’d seen in Peter’s eyes when he told Stiles he believed in him: something ferocious and wild and ancient in its capacity. It both terrifies and enthralls him. He can admit that now.

Because the truth is, he needs Peter. He needs someone who can see and hear him, duh, but he also needs someone who is morally questionable, who will do whatever he has to do in order to accomplish his goals, who won’t judge Stiles for succumbing to the Nogitsune in the first place, who will understand why he did.

And yeah, there’s a chance this will backfire on him, that Peter will live up to his expectations of being a selfish jerk.

There’s a chance that it won’t.

It’s so much more than he had before. It’s amazing what leaps of faith you’re capable of when a psychotic fox demon thing is using your body as a meat puppet.

And Peter had come back to Beacon Hills when he’d rather be anywhere else. He contributed to the research, he put up with company he hated. He made Stiles’ problems his own and, more than that, Peter had listened to Stiles, he’d understood him, he’d—he’d—

Stiles cuts off his train of thought. _Die for him_ echoes traitorously. It’s a dangerous one.

Because all he ever wanted was to matter to someone. To amount to something in someone else’s eyes.

His dad wasn’t there with his mom at the end, not truly, not enough to grasp what Stiles had learned long ago. That when you love someone, you share their burdens. You take on their agony, their despair, their darkness. And it exhausts you, the constant trying and striving and the getting her to eat and sleep and remember when it is so tempting to give up on things beyond your control. It is knowing that in the end you are wrestling a huge black void of futility.

And doing it anyway.

Because that is what you do when you love someone. You suffer with them.

That quality, that care for another person, is what he saw in Peter’s eyes. What he’s been seeing without ever realizing it.

“You’re an idiot,” Stiles says, not sure if he’s talking to himself or Peter.

He angrily gathers up the book and plops it on top of Peter, grinning nastily at his unconscious oof. “Surely something you would die for is worth a little discomfort,” Stiles says sweetly.

He grabs Peter’s arms and begins the long arduous process of dragging him to Lydia’s.

 

* * *

 

Peter awakens to the sound of Cora’s laughter and for one heartstopping moment he thinks he’s back in the Hale house, surrounded by his pack.

Then he becomes cognizant of rough hands on his body, turning him this way and that. Checking his bandages, he realizes, familiar enough with the motion after years in the hospital. He’s lying on his back, a soft mattress beneath him.

He tries to turn his head to see what Cora is laughing at, but narrow fingers catch his chin in an iron hold. “Don’t move your head,” a woman’s voice angrily says. The fact that the anger is not aimed his way takes him a while to recognize the voice as Lydia’s.

He can’t help but try to turn again to see who has incurred her wrath. Again, she thwarts him. “I said don’t do that.”

A rush of displaced air and a translucent Stiles is standing next to the bed. “Peter, you’re awake!”

The happiness in Stiles’ voice is at odds with the frankly enormous amount of space he puts between himself and the bed. Peter can’t imagine what he’s done to earn such awkwardness. Had he inadvertently confessed to Stiles while unconscious? He’s sure he would never do something so deeply embarrassing and tacky but sleeptalking is a real bastard.

Still, Stiles is a sight for sore eyes and Peter makes sure to drink his fill. Lydia is insistently pushing a straw against his lips even though he hardly needs it, Stiles is plenty.

“Should I assume Stiles is here judging by the way you’re basically eyefucking the air?” Lydia’s wryness cuts through the moment like a hot knife through butter.

Peter chokes on his straw and Stiles is stammering out apologies and turning away and something is not right in the tightness around Lydia’s eyes and in the curve of Stiles’ mouth.

The hunch of Stiles’ shoulders sparks something in Peter’s memory.

Stiles’ epiphany regarding the Nogitsune hiding something. Breaking into Deaton’s private library. Stuffing the book down his pants when he gets caught (and boy, does that sting) by those fucking foxes. Seeing Stiles’ face covering someone else’s existence. Sure that it wasn’t Stiles saying and doing terrible things to him. Not so sure it wasn’t Stiles crooning in his ear and holding the blowtorch, laughing at his pained screams. Being dumped into the woods to die like a common mongrel. Trying to find his way back to Lydia’s. Collapsing.  

Stiles in the woods. Stiles yelling at him, his eyes frantic and his movements desperate. Stiles’ head on his chest. Stiles dragging him.

Lydia is kind enough not to say anything when Peter wipes the moisture from his eyes. She fills in the blanks instead.

“We heard someone pounding on the door, but when we went out to look it was only you laid out on the front stoop. We must have taken too long to react or something because Stiles started pushing us, shoving us forward, which of course freaked us out more,” Lydia explains.

“By the time we got everything sorted out, you were already starting to heal again.” Peter swallows hard at her next words. “But I think you would have died if Stiles hadn’t gotten you here.”

She shows him a notepad with the words “It’s Sti” in familiar handwriting. “I think he was tired after dragging your sorry ass all the way here. He couldn’t get all the letters down.”

Peter struggles to sit up. He’s surprised when Lydia helps prop him up. She huffs at him. “Don’t read too much into it. I want to help Stiles too.” And for a second Peter can see the overwhelming sadness and grief in her eyes. He keeps forgetting how many people the Nogitsune has damaged, how far its unctuous influence goes.

He tells Lydia he wants to stop by the kitchen first. Her brow furrows but she helps him limp around before pushing him out the door.

He finds Stiles sitting on the edge of the front steps, his body rigid. Peter sits down next to him. “Here,” he says, proffering a Reese’s to Stiles. “I thought you might be able to eat it now.”

Stiles regards him. “Thanks,” he says, taking the chocolate. He rips open the wrapper and shoves the treat in his mouth. And promptly spits it back up, clawing at his throat and tongue.

“Stiles? Stiles, what is it?” Peter holds his hand suspended in the air for a moment and eventually gives in to temptation. Delight thrums through his veins when he makes contact and he wastes no time in rubbing soothing motions up and down Stiles’ back.

The gagging sounds begin to taper off and finally subside altogether. “Sorry,” Stiles wheezes. “Was a nice idea. But everything still tastes like blood.”

Peter takes advantage of this slow recovery time to maneuver Stiles further into his arms. Stiles jolts slightly then relaxes.

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to touch you. After what happened, I mean,” Stiles mumbles into Peter’s shirt.

An easy promise to make and keep. “I can assure you your touch will always be welcome, Stiles.”

Peter has no idea how long they stay out there. ”We should probably go back inside and tell them how to defeat the kitsunes,” Stiles mutters with a wonderful husky tone to his voice that betrays his exhaustion. He removes himself from Peter’s arms (hopefully regretfully if the slow, deliberate movements are any indication).

Peter sighs mournfully but stands up too. “Very well. Allow me the honor. If not for my noble sacrifice, such knowledge could never be unearthed.”

Stiles snorts. “Page 44. You’re unbelievable. Fucking drama queen.”

Just for that, Peter allows himself an extra 5 seconds of dramatic pause before dropping the bombshell when they gather in Lydia’s kitchen. “The way to defeat the kitsunes…is the hoshi no tama.”

 

* * *

 

“Is that even English?” Scott asks.

He had been largely absent during the research binge, all of them deciding the better tactical move was to let him continue his efforts at reconciliation so as not to arouse suspicion. But when he stopped by the house, Lydia told him about Stiles and he decided to stay and break his cover. Stiles could admit to feeling a tiny bit of joy at that.

Scott shrinks back at Peter’s dead-eyed glower. Stiles steps in before anyone else can lose their will to live. “It’s Japanese, Scott. It’s essentially a little white ball—”

“—that contains all the magical power of a kitsune.” Derek finishes for him, that stubble bastard. “Really, Stiles. If you wanted to impress us, you shouldn’t have left the book out for everyone to read.”

“You touched the penis book?” Whoops, that was more of a shriek volume than an inside voice.

“Did you two do it on the book?” Cora asks, leaning forward in interest.

Peter, ever the helpful one, chimes in. “You’re very proprietary of my penis, Stiles. I’ll have to remember this.”

“Stop,” Scott says faintly, eyes glazing over.

Lydia glances at him and slams her hand down on the table. Stiles notices she’s careful to avoid the book. “Let’s focus here. You’re traumatizing Scott.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out some Purell.

“Okay, here’s the plan…”

* * *

 

It isn’t a very good plan, Stiles reflects as he makes his way over to Allison. He instinctively scans the frontrunners for any recent journeys into the light and is astonished to find no one. In fact, as he gets closer, he can see that all forward movement has ceased.

“You stopped them all?” he asks Allison once he’s made his way over, almost afraid of the answer.

She favors him with a blinding smile. “Yep.” Several someones clear their throats from behind her. “Oh, alright, my dad helped too. And Danny got a few of them.”

“Wow, that’s awesome,” he says around the lump in his throat. If only he’d been faster, had gotten through to her sooner, his dad might still be—

“Stiles,” Allison says firmly, interrupting his train of thought. Oh, right. Impending rebellion and all that.

Stiles gently shrugs off the hand on his arm and faces the rest of the group. “This would be better if I was taller,” he whispers, shaky at all the eyes trained on him.

“The plan,” Chris reminds him with a poorly disguised cough.

“The plan. Okay, so the plan is our allies in the real world will close all the portals in Beacon Hills and make sure they can never be opened again after we do our part.”

“They can do that?” A voice calls from the middle of the group.

Another voice answers before Stiles. “Haven’t you figured it out by now? All the teenagers in this town are wizards. It’s like that movie with the vampires. Only with wizards. That’s why so much weird shit happens here.”

Stiles elects to ignore this ridiculous statement for his own sanity. “Yes, they can do that. Our job is going to be much harder. We’ve got to break through to the real world and find all the hoshi no tama, which are little white balls that hold magical power, and break them. That will break the kitsunes’ hold over our bodies and they will be forced to flee back where they came from. And then we have to make our way back to our own bodies so we can be actual people again. At which point the others will close the portals so they can never get through again. Any questions?”

A veritable cacophony of noise answers him. “One at a time, one at a time!” Stiles shouts, trying to make himself heard over the din.

A sharp whistle pierces directly into Stiles’ eardrums. “Dude,” he tells Chris. “Not cool.”

Chris ignores him. “Listen up, people. All we have to do is break through to the real world. Once we get there, we’ve got a safe place to hide out before we have to get back to our bodies. Let’s focus on one thing at a time.”

Chris looks expectantly at Stiles. “You’re up, kid.”

Stiles points to his chest. “Me?” The truth is, he’s stalling for time and everyone knows it. He has no idea how to even begin to explain how he travels between worlds to these people.

“Close your eyes,” he tells them. “Visualize.” He makes sure to close his own. It’s harder to think in this world, to draw mortal things back to him through the barrier. It’s better to focus on something concrete you can hold in your hand.

There, an image is coming to him now. “Cheeseburgers,” is the first thing he blurts out.

“Cheeseburgers?” A someone, unmistakably Chris Argent, says and Stiles can practically hear the raised eyebrow in his voice.

“Yes, cheeseburgers. With condiments.” Stiles strains to remember what those are. “Ketchup. And mustard.”

“And onions,” says a voice from the back. They’re starting to get it.

“Onions are for chumps,” Stiles cuts in. “Corndogs. McDonald’s French fries. Hash browns. Potato pancakes. Mashed potatoes. Baked potatoes. Potatoes O’Brien.”

“Can we move on from food?” There’s Danny. Fine, something more up his alley. What does Stiles think of when he thinks of Danny?

“Muscles.” Sanitize, sanitize, there are children present. “I mean, wait, hardness. That came out wrong, okay, what I actually meant was…plastic.”

“Plastic?” It sounds like Danny’s offended now, great.

“Plastic as in…a mouse. A screen. A keyboard. It’s on the tip of my tongue, help me out here.”

“Computers!” This from an indiscernible someone.

Stiles keeps the momentum going. “Aha, yes! And TV and cellphones and all the wonders of modern technology.”

“Porn.” Everyone is quiet at Allison’s offering. Someone (her dad?) squeaks.

A woman’s voice speaks up next. She temporarily saves Scott and Isaac from certain annihilation. “Kissing. And hugging. Chocolate. Roses.”

They keep coming now, faster than Stiles can keep up with.

“Violets.”

“Blueberries.”

“The sun.”

“Sand. Water. Nasty seagulls.”

“Christmas lights. Snowballs and snowmen.”

“That new car smell.”

“Velvet. Peppermint. Cigarette smoke.”

Around and around they go, clamoring over one another; the words can’t come fast enough. Stiles can feel the shadows folding in around them, the whoosh of air whistling in his ears, a pressure building.

He can sense the others, smushed into a tight knot of fear behind him. There’s nothing to worry about though. Stiles knows the way, has traveled this road a hundred times before. He knows all the traps, the twists, the potholes to avoid.

“Follow me,” he says. He safely leads them out into the less all-encompassing darkness of a Beacon Hills night and the first thing he sees when he open his eyes again is Peter Hale’s cheesy smile stretched wide across his face. Helpless to that particular sight, he steps forward into Peter’s space and it feels like a revelation when he is met with open regard.

“Welcome back.”

Everyone’s eyes pop open at the sound of Peter’s voice, which sounds quite different than anything they’ve heard in a while. It sounds alive.

There is a stunned silence as they process this (in their defense, they are sort of dead, Stiles being the exception to this rule, his brain processes function just fine, thank you). Someone in the middle of the knot cheers, the others following suit, until Stiles shushes them out of exasperation.

“I thought you said no one could hear or see us except Peter,” Allison says out of the corner of her mouth.

“Caution is key in this situation.” Stiles holds up his pointer finger for emphasis.

“Hmm,” Allison murmurs, looking thoughtfully between him and Peter, at the way Stiles’ arm brushes his. “I don’t think so.”

 Thankfully, she is distracted by the horde of similar-to-ghosts-but-definitely-not-ghosts around her. “Everyone,” she says, projecting her voice as loud as she can. “Let’s make for Lydia’s.”

It is the strangest procession Stiles has ever seen. A throng of translucent people hovering above the ground, stopping and pointing left and right and yelling at various random objects “a stop sign,” “trees,” “I think that’s my house!” “No, wait, it’s that one!” at the top of their lungs.

He and Peter hang back in the shadows, since Peter can still be spotted. At one point, Stiles sees Peter reaching for his arm and concentrates his energy in that area so he can grab hold of it. This earns him a pleased grin and a whisper, hot and heavy, of “I told you so” in his ear. This bastard has definitely been waiting for the perfect time to say it.

“You’re blushing,” Peter says and dammit, he sounds so smug that Stiles can’t help but deny it.

“I am not!” In fact, Stiles is sure he’d be the color of a tomato if not for his current predicament. They make it to Lydia’s with the accompanying soundtrack of Peter’s snickers.

Stiles doesn’t expect to see Lydia and the others waiting when he floats through the door, what with their assigned job of waiting by the portals, but it still sends a shockwave of disappointment through him when they find the house empty.

Instead, all he sees is a bunch of translucents continuing with the pointing and yelling routine. He startles at the sensation of Peter’s nudge. Stiles hadn’t even seen that one coming.  

“What do you want to do?”

Stiles answers without thinking. “I want to lay their bones outside their flesh.”

Peter’s smirk is positively bloodthirsty, which is to be expected, but Stiles is stunned at the collective bloodlust he can see in many peoples’ eyes. Then again, maybe staying in Beacon Hills for so long has driven them all a little crazy.

Chris speaks up again, for which Stiles is grateful because he’s really only used to leading Scott. “Anyone who wants to come on the raid, step forward.” About 14 people detach themselves from the group. “Everyone else, wait here. I assume they’ll know when it’s time to find their bodies?” Chris asks Stiles.

“According to the research we’ve done, you should feel a tug. Allow it to pull you towards your body. Parents, they’ve kept most of the kids’ bodies in the schools. Babies were kept in that big daycare over on Redwood Street.” He tries not to stare at the translucent babies in their parents’ arms.

Stiles takes a deep breath. “Good luck everyone.”

 

* * *

 

The first step is a massive raid of the hoshi no tama. Stiles has been keeping track of the kitsunes’ conversations ever since his recent lifestyle change. Confident in the total defeat of the humans, they made easy eavesdropping prey.

“There’s a stash here, here, here, and here,” he says, pointing to different places on the map he spread out on Lydia’s dining room table. “The ones higher up the chain tend to keep theirs on them. That’s where we come in.”

“How are we supposed to smash anything in this state?” asks one of the new groupies.

Allison, who has inexplicably been fingering the handle of a kitchen knife this whole time, says, “The same way we got here, right?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, relieved he doesn’t have to try to convert his and Peter’s life-or-death situation into vague advice.

The people around him concentrate until Stiles can practically see the collective effort in the air. “I did it,” one woman exclaims, holding up a pen.

“Congratulations,” Sties says dryly. “Moving on, we will probably need about two people per stash. That’s 8. There are seven higher-ups, including the boss. Two generals and four lieutenants. The lieutenants tend to congregate in this general area. You 6 take on the lieutenants. Divide yourselves however you want. Allison and Chris, I want you on the generals. I’ll deal with the boss.” Peter clears his throat loudly. “We’ll deal with the boss.”

A woman raises her hand tentatively. “Can they—Can they hurt us?”

Stiles frowns, having expected this question much sooner. “We aren’t sure. They can’t see or hear you, but that may change once you’re holding their hoshi no tama. Just smash it as quick as you can, okay? We can’t forget that this is a battle for your very life. Please treat it with all due seriousness.”

Everyone nods. “Okay, let’s head out.”

They file outside past the rest of the translucents, who are watching with solemn eyes.

Stiles gives Peter the go-ahead signal and he unclips his walkie-talkie. “Operation”—here he heaves an entirely unnecessary deep sigh—“Beacon Bash is a go.”

“Copy.”

“Affirmative.”

“Bash on.”

“Who came up with that name?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

_Isaac, you piece of shit! Take this seriously or I’ll kill you_ , Stiles thinks furiously at the piece of plastic.

Out loud, he says “Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Stiles knows exactly where to find the Nogitsune. He suspects he will have this talent for detecting foxes for the rest of his life, god help him.

“Stiles…” Peter breathes out once they reach the sheriff’s office. They haven’t run into any resistance along the way because no one is stupid enough to confront the Nogitsune head on.

“Don’t,” he warns Peter.

Stiles wills him to understand, how if he gives in to Peter’s concern he’ll never be able to harden himself for the battle ahead. Luckily, Peter is perceptive and remains quiet.

They step into the room.

There are dry leaves crunching under Stiles’ feet. He’s running, running away from something. He doesn’t know what it is, all he can feel is its panting on the back of neck—

The world distorts, twists.

He’s sitting across from bomber jacket-Nogitsune, a go board between them with Peter’s face on all the pieces.  “Focus, Stiles,” the pieces are saying, over and over again. His voice echoes in the long white hallway.

The world distorts again.

“Focus, Stiles.” His dad is leaning over him to help with his math homework. His dad’s hand is big and strong compares to Stiles’ and he keeps getting distracted by the fine lines and hairs on their hands. His dad is getting frustrated. “You just need to learn to focus.”

Distort.

The school’s locker room is mostly empty at this time of night. The only one left is the janitor. The dip and swish of a mop is the only sound. Stiles is naked, he can’t find a towel anywhere, but he ventures closer. There’s something hypnotizing about the motion, the back and forth of the mop. Stiles peeks inside the bucket and finds it red with blood. 

Distort.

A clown emerging from the sewers.

Distort.

Peter and his dad killing each other, one with claws the other with a gun.

Distort.

Stiles has no mouth.

Distort.

He’s a worm wriggling in the dirt. He is blind and deaf. The dirt is all he knows. And it speaks to him, seeming to pulse and throb around him with every syllable. “You have so many weaknesses, Stiles. But do not feel bad, all humans do. Did you come here to defeat me? It is hopeless, you must know that. You have always known that. It is, after all, the most logical conclusion.”

The dirt is all Stiles knows. It must be right.

“Don’t listen to it, Stiles!” This sound is nothing like the dirt. It’s small and weak. It must be a fellow worm. “I know how strong you are, Stiles. You’ve given me the privilege of letting me see it. So I know that you can do incredible things even when the odds are stacked against you. You can do this. Beat it.”

“Tch. An annoying pest interfering in a battle that has nothing to do with you. Begone, worm.” The dirt falls over the worm in one big pile. Surely, it must be crushed under the weight.

Distort.

He is an astronaut floating in space on a tether. The sun is directly in front of him, blinding him with its rays. The heat coming off of it is incredible.

“Get away from him!” That small voice sounds so familiar, Stiles can’t help but windmill his arms and legs toward the small star it’s coming from, though logic tells him it’s farther away than he could reach.

Distort.

He is falling, falling, further and further down. There is darkness pressing in all around him. The air around him is thick and cold, frozen in his lungs. He falls for a long time. Surely he must hit the ground soon. But no, still he falls.  

“This one is rather boring,” the darkness says. “But it is the most effective one yet. You can hardly think! This will definitely finish you off.”

Think? Think? Why does he need to think? Think about what? The darkness should have told him what to think about. Instead, it taunts him with his impending doom.

For some reason, this pisses him off. He throws out his arms and legs, finding a few footholds and slowing his momentum. So he needs to think, does he? Think through the primal terror this fall in darkness inspires in him? Fine! He grabs a few more footholds, skidding along the side of whatever he’s holding on to.

“Wh—What are you doing?” The darkness is talking again, but he cannot hear it. He is too busy climbing. Up, up back the way he came.

“Get back, get back, you wretched creature!” The darkness is screaming.

It disappears. The footholds become the scaled hide of a dragon, breathing fire through its mouth.

He holds on tighter.

The dragon turns to water, slipping through his hands.

He scoops it up between his palms.

To find flies. Hundreds of them, buzzing around his face, his hands, his arms. He swats them away, but they are persistent.

Strangely, there is a giant knot of them swarming around something he cannot see.

He reaches for it, intent on paying back the darkness.

The flies are driven to a frenzy. They fly up his nose and his ears. They crawl on his eyes. Nevertheless, he reaches and reaches until at long last he grasps something cold and hard and most definitely not a fly.

He brings it to his chest. It’s a white ball, sparkling and beautiful. No wonder the flies protected it so fiercely.

For some reason, it pisses him off.

He drops it on the ground and crushes it beneath his foot. Haha, Stiles thinks smugly.

 

* * *

 

There is hard tile under Stiles’ feet. He’s lying on the floor. Peter’s huddled next to him. His breath moves Stiles’ hair. In and out. In and out.

“Is this a dream?” Stiles asks, afraid of the answer.

“You tell me.” Stiles shivers at the drag of lips against skin.

He looks down. He is no longer translucent. He counts his fingers. Five and five as it should be.

He needs to focus. “The portals? Did everyone find their bodies?”

Peter shushes him. “It’s all taken care of.”

Stiles tries to wriggle out of Peter’s hold, and Peter’s arms tighten around him. “Not yet,” he whispers like an absolution; Stiles realizes he can’t let go, not that he won’t.

“Here, eat this.” The moment is ruined when a Reese’s is shoved into his face.

This is brilliant, Stiles should have thought of this. He tears the wrapper off and stuffs both pieces into his mouth and tastes…

Chocolate. Glorious chocolate. And peanut butter, its beloved partner in crime.

And now Peter has decided to have a taste. He kisses Stiles desperately again and again. They sway into each other’s spaces until Stiles doesn’t know where he ends and Peter begins, their nails digging into each other’s necks and shoulders as if to reassure themselves the other is still there.

It proves a bit too much activity for Stiles’ newly rediscovered old body. He breaks away, feeling dizzy and light-headed, perhaps not entirely from fatigue. He smacks Peter on the arm. “You’re stealing the peanut butter essence!”

“I plan to steal much more than that.”

They’ve got like a million things to do now that the kitsunes are gone. Get reaccustomed to their bodies. Bury and mourn the 17 dead. Make sure the portals are firmly closed. Take inventory and start cleaning up the mess they left behind. And that’s just off the top of Stiles’ head.

And with the nasty introduction to the supernatural the rest of Beacon Hills got, they should do some damage control. The future is spread out before them, uncertainties and impossibilities at every turn, each road brimming out of Stiles’ mind and spiraling into different outcomes.

Stiles doesn’t need to think about this, though. It’s simply there, thrumming between him and Peter, whispers in their hearts.


End file.
